Chapter Five “We Must Fight the Devil With Fire”: Slasher-Gaff Politico in Springfield (1837-1841) Gloom afflicted Lincoln as he launched his new career in the “straggling” and “irregular village” of Springfield (population 1300).1 In the 1830s, “its houses were mostly frame and poorly constructed,” its “streets and most of its sidewalks were unpaved, and in the spring and fall its normal condition was that of unfathomable mud. Indeed, for many years it was far from being an inviting city.”2 A visitor described it as “a common-place, sprawling sort of town, covering about ten times as much ground as it ought.”3 In 1832, William Cullen Bryant compared Springfield unfavorably to nearby Jacksonville, which he deemed “a horribly ugly village, composed of little shops and dwellings, stuck close together around a dirty square, in the middle of which stands the ugliest of possible brick court- houses.” Bad as Jacksonville was, it outshone Springfield, where “the houses are not so good, 1 Patrick Shirreff, A Tour through North America; Together with a Comprehensive View of the Canadas and the United States as Adapted for Agricultural Emigration (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1835), 242; James Stuart, Three Years in North America (2 vols.; New York: J. and J. Harper, 1833), 2:224. When Lincoln arrived in Springfield, the town had “nineteen dry goods stores, one wholesale and six retail groceries, four public houses, four drug stores, one book store, two clothing stores, eleven lawyers, eighteen physicians including steam doctors, one foundry for castings, four carding machines, mechanics and trades of various descriptions, and two printing offices.” J. M. Peck, A Gazetteer of Illinois (Philadelphia: Grigg & Elliott, 1837), 296. Many of its buildings “are small; and the humble log cabin, the abiding place of some of the first settlers, not unfrequently meets the eye,” according to an 1837 sketch of Illinois. H. L. Ellsworth, Illinois in 1837: A Sketch (Philadelphia: S. Augustus Mitchell, 1837), 129. For an overview of Springfield in Lincoln’s time, see Paul M. Angle, “Here I Have Lived”: A History of Lincoln’s Springfield (Springfield: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1935) and Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Dallas: Taylor, 2001), 172- 315. 2 John Moses, Illinois, Historical and Statistical (2 vols.; Chicago: Fergus, 1889), 1:431-32. 3 Springfield correspondence, 21 June, Utica, New York, Herald, 27 June, copied in the New York Tribune, 9 July 1860. 408 Michael Burlingame – Abraham Lincoln: A Life – Vol. 1, Chapter 5 a considerable proportion of them being log cabins, and the whole town having an appearance of dirt and discomfort.”4 Other New Yorkers declared that Springfield lacked “that clean fresh look” characteristic of eastern villages, and complained that “it had the dirtiest and dustiest streets I ever saw and on the whole was a very unattractive, sickly, unenterprising town.”5 The city’s mud was notorious. When wet, the black loam of central Illinois became “prairie gumbo.”6 In 1842, a local newspaper observed that residents “have to waid through the mud knee deep, in passing from the square to almost any part of the city.”7 A New York woman reported that people could not “know the definition of ‘Mud’ until they come to Springfield. I think scrapers and mats must be fast selling articles here.”8 The family of Elizabeth Capps, who called Springfield “a low, muddy place where it was a common thing for carriages and horses to mire in the mud around the public square,” left the city for Mt. Pulaski because the latter enjoyed a “high and dry location.”9 Mud rendered the sidewalks, 4 William Cullen Bryant to his wife, Jacksonville, Illinois, 12 and 19 June 1832, in William Cullen Bryant, Prose Writings (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), 2:13-14. 5 Mary Hedges Hubbard to her sisters, Springfield, 28 September 1857, in Kenneth Scott, ed., “A New York Girl Plays Cards with Mr. Lincoln: Life in Springfield, Illinois, a Century Ago,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 41 (1957): 73; excerpts from an unpublished autobiography by William Henry, brother of Anson G. Henry, enclosed in Harry S. Douglas to Carl Sandburg, Arcade, New York, 12 February 1955, Abraham Lincoln Association reference files, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield. 6 In 1855 a journalist complained about Springfield mud three inches deep. Springfield correspondence, n.d., St. Louis Missouri Republican, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 9 January 1855. In Massachusetts, a newspaper referred to the Illinois capital as a “little city of right angles and prairie mud.” Springfield correspondence by W., 3 February, Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, 12 February 1861. 7 Illinois State Register (Springfield), 9 December 1842. 8 Miriam Morrison Worthington, ed., “Diary of Anna R. Morrison, Wife of Isaac L. Morrison,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 7 (1914): 43 (entry for 13 December 1840). 9 Elizabeth Lushbaugh Capps, “Early Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,” Abraham Lincoln Association reference files, “Reminiscences” folder, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield. 409 Michael Burlingame – Abraham Lincoln: A Life – Vol. 1, Chapter 5 such as they were, impassable.10 The streets were even worse; in foul weather they “approached the condition of a quagmire with dangerous sink-holes where the boatmen’s phrase ‘no bottom’ furnished the only description.”11 Not until 1870 was the town square paved, finally making its thoroughfares passable for wagon teams in winter.12 Garbage and refuse as well as mud rendered the streets repellant, for an “absence of civic pride made them the dumping ground of the community rubbish so that the gutters were filled with manure, discarded clothing and all kinds of trash, threatening the public health with their noxious effluvium.” Roaming livestock compounded matters. Throughout the ante- bellum period, the “problem of the hog nuisance and of the running at large of cows came up time and again and most frequently the owners of the stock succeeded in having full freedom given to their property to wander through the streets of the city at will.”13 After wallowing in mud, hogs “had the unpleasant habit of going about and rubbing off . dirt and filth against whitewashed fences and painted house corners.”14 Adding to the street stench was the aroma produced by summer heat “operating upon the privies, sink holes, stables, and other receptacles of filth,” causing “them to send up an abundance of pestilential effluvia.”15 The numerous ponds around town, which “furnished frog and mosquitoe music for the inhabitants” and were always “loathsome to the eye,” 10 “Mentor” in the Sangamo Journal, 1 April 1847. A visitor decried the absence of “a single good sidewalk” or “even a public lamp to light a street.” Rockford Forum, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 4 March 1853. 11 Clinton L. Conkling, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 February 1919. 12 Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 28 February 1931, section 3, p. 3. 13 Clinton L. Conkling, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 February 1919. 14 Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 8 August 1857. 15 Illinois State Register (Springfield), 2 August 1839. 410 Michael Burlingame – Abraham Lincoln: A Life – Vol. 1, Chapter 5 became “sickening to the smell” in hot weather.16 Also noisome was the market house, a “miserable abortion” deemed “contemptible to the eye and contemptible in itself,” swarming with green-back flies.17 The town’s other structures were also unimpressive. In 1853, a newspaper in northern Illinois said that “Springfield presents neither a pleasant or cheerful appearance, nor does it give any demonstrations of great enterprise, either public or private. There does not appear to be much taste or neatness in the arrangements of things, either of a private or public character, especially of a public, judging from streets, alleys, side-walks, &c. Most of the buildings for business purposes were small and poorly arranged and constructed as cheaply as possible.”18 The capitol, fronted by “old dilapidated buildings,” was considered “an eye sore to the city.”19 Its interior was, in the opinion of a visitor, “the most shabby, forlorn, dirty, dilapidated specimen of a public edifice which we have ever seen.”20 The “small and badly kept” hotels were too few in number, and those that did exist were considered inadequate.21 A correspondent for a Quincy newspaper reported from Springfield that the “public houses here are but shabby affairs, the only particular in which they have the least appearance of corresponding with the good hotels of our country, is in their bills.”22 The 16 George R. Weber, “Good-Bye,” Old Settlers Telephone (Springfield), n.d., clipping, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne; “Mentor” in the Sangamo Journal, 1 April 1847. 17 Unidentified source quoted in Benjamin P. Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor” and Other Essays, ed. Michael Burlingame (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 173-74. 18 Rockford Forum, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 4 March 1853. 19 Waukegan Democrat, n.d., copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 30 October 1855; Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 18 July 1855. 20 Letter by “Chicago,” Springfield, 7 October, Chicago Daily Times, 12 October 1858. 21 St. Louis Intelligencer, n.d, copied in the Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 15 August 1854. “We need more hotels,” Springfield’s Democratic newspaper observed in 1854.